Climate change scientist reveals denier's trickery

[Brian W]

Climate change deniers use false information that can sometimes look realistic until analyzed by scientists who are educated in the field. In this case, the denier is Jordan Peterson, somebody who ought to know how to do academic research but in this case fails badly!

 

[Lou]

Being a climate denier in 2010 was bad enough.
In 2023??!! Just look out the window buddy.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Is it me or does the climate scientist look like Loki from the Avengers movies?

 

[Brian W]

Is it me or does the climate scientist look like Loki from the Avengers movies?

I see what you mean.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

I watched the video now.

Judging by that Jordan Peterson is in the hardcore of 10%-20% of people that can be ignored as we try to get a majority between 50% to 80% of people. We can basically ignore them to a large extent.

 

[Brian W]

I watched the video now.

Judging by that Jordan Peterson is in the hardcore of 10%-20% of people that can be ignored as we try to get a majority between 50% to 80% of people. We can basically ignore them to a large extent.

When the effects are on your doorstep, it can be hard to ignore them, but I see what you mean percentage wise.

 

[Jon]

Being a climate denier in 2010 was bad enough.
In 2023??!! Just look out the window buddy.

You cannot look out of the window to judge climate change. Climate change takes thousands of years, not the weather on any individualo day! What's happeniing to the earth as regards the temp, weather etc. should have taken 10.000yrs, but it's all happened in the last 150yrs! You cannot keep putting all the crap that we do into the narrow band of our atmosphere and not expect it to do something drastic to it. The changes that have happened in your life time should have taken thousands of years. We all know the earth gets hotter and cooler in cycles of many thousands of years but what we've done is accelerate that process to dangerous levels too quickly. The earth needs to acclimatise itself to these changes over a very long period of time and we have accelerated this too quickly and the earth cannot cope with sudden changes. And 150yrs is a very sudden change to the earth.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

I think Lou's comment to "look out the window" is broadly valid because I think what he means is in the past scientists were saying that such effects of climate change will happen in the future or, to the extent that they already happened, had only led to smaller increases in droughts, fires, storms etc etc. However we've now reached the point where we can actually observe the effects of greenhouse gases if not literally by one glance out of the window but yes in terms of observing the effects we see around us, talking to contacts in our own and other countries, and watching TV.

While it's hard to pin down whether certain specific things like droughts, fires, storms etc are on the increase and to what extent each one is due to greenhouse gases, we can broadly say that there has been some negative change in weather events and climate at both at a local and global level.

So the negative impacts of climate change are now observable rather than a scientific prediction for the future which I think is what Lou meant.

 

[Lou]

You cannot look out of the window to judge climate change. Climate change takes thousands of years, not the weather on any individualo day!

True,
And thanks Jaime for helping me out
but to make it clear I was thinking you can look at your window and see very unusual weather and events.
For instance I'm looking at very smoky skies. The skies are filled with smoke because the number of forest fires is 3X the annual average.
And some of us are looking at streets filled with water. Because there are way more floods than typical. (granted climate change is not the only culprit here)
Or you might look out the window and see a lot of fallen trees or the street sign that has been blown into your yard. Storms are worse now than they used to be.
And let's not disregard droughts and heatwaves, too.

Climate change keeps making wildfires and smoke worse. Scientists call it the 'new abnormal'

As smoky as the summer has been so far, scientists say it will likely be worse in future years because of climate change.

apnews.com

UN report finds 90 per cent of disasters are weather-related

A new UN report shows that over the last 20 years, 90 per cent of major disasters have been caused by 6,457 floods, storms, heatwaves and other events.

www.un.org

 

[Jamie in Chile]

One denier tactics is to focus in on one aspect:

Scientists say greenhouse gases have increased the strength of hurricanes, flooding, sea level rise, the amount of fires, are killing the coral reefs, spreading disease, leading to famine, crops failing, water shortaes etc etc etc

And then someone will say something that may or may not be true like "fires in California are actually down since 2000" or "most fires are actually caused by arson"

I`m like OK, not sure if that´s true, but what about the other 20 bad things caused by global heating that you´ve ignored.

Somehow disputing 1 of the 20 bad things caused by climate change and ignoring the 19 is supposed to be a good argument.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

by the way I´m not saying fires in California are down, that was just an imagined made up argument, the kind of thing a denier would say. I don´t know what the trend is there, but the point is it doesn´t matter.

 

[Andy_T]

Not really news, unfortunately...

 

[Graeme M]

I`m like OK, not sure if that´s true, but what about the other 20 bad things caused by global heating that you´ve ignored.

Well... it's hard to know for sure isn't it? Many of the major climate related negative events are not really at greater rates or levels than the past, some are actually down. The IPCC itself doesn't observe significant worsening trends in many such events. And singular events are almost impossible to attribute to climate change other than to say, well, if the air were getting warmer that event is consistent with what we'd expect. But did climate change cause it? We cannot say that yet.

Consider the recent fires on Maui. The actual events on the day were not due to climate change but rather a mix of natural factors and man-made influences. But, the weather had been unusually dry leading up to the fires. But is that dryness outside the range of prior dry conditions? Maybe, I don't know because I've not looked into. I would say probably not, but perhaps climate change has made it more likely we will have those dry periods. Consider sea level. In some places it may be rising but in others, not so much. Is sea level rise really a concern? I revisited my childhood home last week and observed that the local beach looks exactly the same as a photo I have from 70 years ago. So I looked at the local tide gauge data. Overall, it shows a rise in sea level over that time but in reality it had been falling up until about 15 years ago. Then, for about 5 years, it rose quite a lot. Since then, it has been falling. What to make of that? I suspect local man-made influences. But, we do know that overall, the sea level is rising and must eventually be a problem in some places.

What do I think personally? Rising CO2 emissions must cause the atmosphere to warm. How much is not certain, but estimates suggest a broad possible range. Are we seeing an increase in significant negative weather events? Overall, probably not. But there do seem to be some things happening that might be climate change related. Will this lead to the end of the world. No. Should we do something? Probably, and luckily we are. But in the end, maybe not enough.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Yes, climate change leads to more dry periods that is clear scientific consensus. True, can´t attribute to individual events but it´s clear that climate change makes things worse overall.

Sea level is more a future problem as rises so far have been small. Even if emissions are zero, ice may continue melting for centuries. A metre or two sea level rise this century is expected: that´s serious, but it will continue well beyond that in future centuries. Some (most?) or Miami and lower Bangladesh is already probably doomed.

There is actually a fairly good understanding that x CO2 leads to y warming. Yes, there is some margin for error but it´s clearer than you say.

We need to do a lot more. There is no global downward trend of emissions yet.

I think you are wrong to say there is not an increase in significant negative weather events. The intensity of the worst events seems to be increasing when you look at fires, hurricanes, storms, droughts etc. We could do with someone doing a detailed global study to quantify it. The evidence that the events are more intense is very strong, I am not so sure about increasing frequency of events however. That is less clear cut so you would need to study it.

I think you are wrong to say there do seem to be "some things happening that might be climate change related" i.e. where you say might it should be saying certain!

To be honest I think your comments lean a bit towards the denier side of things and saying the things you do in practice will lead to less action.

Due to the fact the whole of society is still a little in denial about climate, I might have thought what you thought if I got my opinions from TV and facebook and friends and looking out the window. I think I was you in 2006 when I watched An Inconvenient Truth. I still have the handwritten notes where I scribbled down my skepticism. But since then I´ve read a lot of books and read the science and it´s somewhat worse than you think, and the need for action in reducing emissions is greater than what you think. Most people are in a similar position to you.

 

[Graeme M]

I think you are wrong to say there do seem to be "some things happening that might be climate change related" i.e. where you say might it should be saying certain!

I'm not sure there actually is evidence for a definite increase in the severity of many extreme events. From what I recall of the summary from IPCC AR6, there is as yet no clear signal for most such events. The IPCC suggests that for most extreme events, it is likely there have been increases in either frequency or severity, but there is no certainty as yet. The only things we know for sure are happening are more frequent and intense heat extremes.

In terms of temperature increases over time, while the physics can give us some sense of what we can expect from a doubling of CO2 there are a lot of uncertainties, for example are cloud feedbacks net negative or positive? Another interesting facet might be unexpected consequences. For example, changes to high altitude cloud responses to ship tracks in the Atlantic has contributed to a warming of the Atlantic. This is still a human-induced change, but is it directly down to CO2 emissions?

[But researchers are now waking up to another factor, one that could be filed under the category of unintended consequences: disappearing clouds known as ship tracks. Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) have cut ships’ sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide. The reduction has also lessened the effect of sulfate particles in seeding and brightening the distinctive low-lying, reflective clouds that follow in the wake of ships and help cool the planet. The 2020 IMO rule “is a big natural experiment,” says Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We’re changing the clouds.”]

Overall, the IPCC finds that the long term atmospheric response should be in the range 2C to 5C for a doubling of CO2 with the central estimate around 3C. The short term response (this century) is from about 1C to 2.5C with the central estimate about 1.8C. That's for a doubling of CO2, the question might be, will that happen. At curent rates we will see that happen in around 80 years, but CO2 rates of increase have been falling since about 2015. It's debateable, given that we are rapidly depleting oil and coal reserves while also increasing use of renewables, whether we will actually reach 560ppm by 2100.

I think we are seeing about 1.2C of increase for the global average temperature as at today, so it seems possible that we will not exceed 2.00C this century. I'm not convinced 2C will result in catastrophe.

Now, I wouldn't say I have great insight into climate change, but I *have* been following tihe science pretty closely for around a decade. I do believe that the globe must warm from rising emissions, I am just not so certain it is as bad as people are making out. Time will tell, I guess.

 

[Lou]

....I am just not so certain it is as bad as people are making out. Time will tell, I guess.

Already seems pretty bad to me.
You sound like that guy on his roof waiting for definitive proof of a flood.

 

[Lou]

from reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/16c2jb2

 

[Graeme M]

Already seems pretty bad to me.
You sound like that guy on his roof waiting for definitive proof of a flood.

I think we have to be careful not to confuse terrible weather events of today as evidence of some change away from a more settled past. The truth is that we have had many terrible events in the past, and natural variability means it is hard to know when something really has changed. That's why I say I agree that there appear to be adverse changes that *may* be related to climate change but we won't know for sure for some time yet. The IPCC observes that some events appear to be the result of climate change and that climate change causal factors are consistent with anthropogenic forcing. But, is this a definite link? I don't think there is yet sufficient evidence for this. What we are doing is seeking to respond to the threat of future hardship IF things continue as they are. And my point is that for now, it seems likely things will NOT continue as they are. However, the big players are China and India where emissions continue to rise. In the West, we have actually done much to reduce emissions and if the rest of the world had done as much, the future threat would be much reduced.

So, are things pretty bad right now? On balance, no I don't think so. Not directly from GHG caused warming at least. We should have a much clearer idea by 2050, I'd expect. I can't speak for other parts of the world but while we have seen some change in Australia, by and large things are much the same as they have always been. What we do see is people claiming that modern events are much worse than the past but often this is because those same people are not aware of what has happened in the past.

I'm not denying that the atmosphere should warm from anthropogenic emissions. How much and what that means is open to question, however. All of that said, I will not be surprised if in fact things do go bad at some stage. All I am saying is that I don't think we have strong evidence as yet for such extremely negative outcomes. And I am absolutely NOT saying we shouldn't take precautionary measures.

 

[Lou]

I think we have to be careful not to confuse terrible weather events of today as evidence of some change away from a more settled past.

um.... nope.

 

[Lou]

Evidence